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I accidentally deleted my comment right after writing it. I'm going to write it again.

If you killed them, their property would have passed to their heirs.

Option 1: maybe you lack the tools to stop this inheritance. Maybe your only choice is to kill those heirs.

But to do so, you must now kill children. And crucially, you must now build your movement out of members who are okay with killing children.

Your new country will be a vicious, cold, brutal place.

Option 2: you figure out some way to take control of the legal system enough to strip their heirs of their wealth without killing those heirs.

Now, you've got a tool that can be wielded to separate people from their property without killing them. Which makes the first killing (the killing of the parents) optional.

Once again, to kill those parents, you must now build your movement out of members who are okay with killing when it has become optional.

The real solution with option 1 is to gain the power to make option 2 possible. The real solution with option 2 is to align yourself with those members of your movement who believe killing should be avoided whenever killing is optional.

I think the slaveowners of the south should have been stripped of their property. I think the plantations should have been given to the slaves as reparation.

I think klansmen should have been stripped of everything they owned.

But only use bullets when they show up with pitchforks to burn down one of these plantations newly transferred into black hands. Don't go seeking out former slaveowners to kill. Just kill the ones currently trying to burn down the former plantation.

At any rate, you must make a choice between aligning yourself with people who err on the side of killing (even when it's no longer necessary), and aligning yourself with people who err on the side of sparing lives (even when it causes problems.)

You don't want to alienate the latter. You don't want to give power to the former.

Deciding whether or not to kill people is not about who deserves death: it's about choosing your allies. And you don't want your allies to be the ones erring on the side of unnecessary violence.

if every slave owner and klansman were put to death for their heinous crimes

Their property would have passed to their heirs.

If your only available tool was killing people, then maybe you could have followed it up by killing their children?

But then you have to contend with the fact that your movement (and the people you have handed weapons to) are now a very specific subset of communists -- "communists who are okay with killing children." You can't build a country off of that!

If on the other hand you have some way of stopping slaveowners' heirs from receiving their fortunes without killing those heirs, then you clearly have some tool that can void the property of the slaveowners themselves without killing them.

And once again, if you choose to kill the slaveowners despite possessing such a tool, then you wind up building your movement off of, "people who are fine with killing when it's no longer necessary." After that, it's no surprise when that movement starts running over a bunch of members of Hungarian soviets -- the very people the movement claims to protect -- with tanks.

Yeah, I think their plantations should have been taken from them. Yeah, I think Klansmen should have been stripped of everything they owned.

But once you're powerful enough to do that, you're also powerful enough to do that without killing them.

If they throw their bodies in front of the Orphan Crushing Machine, don't let that stop your bullets. But if they step aside, you have a choice: align yourself with people who kill when they don't need to, or align yourself with people who avoid killing whenever possible.

One of those is better than the other.

You replied to my accidentally deleted comment (which probably isn't deleted on your instance.) I really wish Liftoff didn't put the edit button right next to the delete button. But oh well.

Did the children abuse and own slaves? No? Then who the fuck said kill the kids too. Imagine fucking defending slave owners and saying they don’t deserve to be out to death. Imagine defending the most evil atrocities imaginable. Do you think the Nazis shouldn’t have been put to death? Because the slave owners did worse than the Nazis ever did.

Edit: also no one fucking stepped aside. They fought a fucking war over it remember. You don’t get to start a war to enslave humans and then cry peace I surrender when you start to actually suffer the consequences.

Try defending black people like you defend slave owners.

I believe in life sentences, not death sentences. I would have been fine if the Nazis had been thrown in prison to serve non-commutable life sentences for their crimes. I would have preferred it.

But the entire reason the Civil War didn't stick was because slaveowners kept their property. Not because they kept their lives.

who the fuck said kill the kids too

Dude. Their kids grew up and enslaved black people using "prisons" and Jim Crow laws. And they were able to do this because they wielded the power they inherited from their slaveowning parents. If you leave the kids this power, then you're going to need to kill them eventually for committing the same crimes.

Just take away their power! Imprison as many of the slaveowners if you can. And then leave it at that.

The South surrendered unconditionally. If I had a time machine, and could influence the North's decisions, I would take their property because that would actually accomplish something. But I would not take any more lives than were absolutely necessary.

Because I don't want to be on the side that kills more people than is necessary.

I see. I said, "that's just not going to happen."

Which expressed certainty in something that is uncertain. My bad. It might happen. Billionaires might throw themselves in front of the Orphan Crushing Machine when we open fire on that thing. My words were poorly chosen.

However, we still don't want to alienate people who believe in sparing life whenever possible. (Those are the people whose side we always want to be on.) And we also still don't want to align with people who believe in taking life even when it's unnecessary. (Those are the people whose side you never want to be on.)

Be mindful of the movement you are building. Be mindful of the allies you are choosing.